Frontex focuses on six principal areas pointed out by the Frontex Regulation.
Frontex is an intelligence-driven agency whose core activity is operations, the first stage of which is risk analysis. The agency’s situation centre gathers and collates information from partner countries, within and beyond the EU’s borders, as well as from open sources such as academic publications and the pres, to create as clear a picture as possible of the ongoing situation at Europe’s frontiers. This information is then analysed using Frontex’s own system, CIRAM (Common Integrated Risk Analysis Model), which has been developed over the course of the agency’s activities in close co-operation with its partners. The result of this is a comprehensive model of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats at the external borders enabling Frontex to balance resources and risk with a view to neither under- nor over-protecting the border. Frontex’s objective, in a nutshell, is to strike a balance between minimising the threat of illegality at the border while maximising the ease and convenience of bona fide travellers.
Frontex co-ordinates joint operations between Member States and other partners with the aim of strengthening external border security. On the basis of risk analysis, an operational plan is formulated—with the full involvement of participating states—to focus on a specific weakness or other defined need. This project is then financed, funded and project managed by Frontex, though it is led by the country (Member State or Schengen-associated country) hosting the operation. It is then evaluated by the participants for future improvement of each stage of the system. Frontex’s most successful joint-operation to date was Operation Hera, which targeted the passage of irregular migrants, and the criminal organisations that transported them, from West Africa to the Canary Islands. By stemming the flow of people through this highly dangerous route, hundreds if not thousands of lives were saved.
The establishment of common training standards for border guards across Europe is an important element of Frontex’s activities. In the five years since its inception the agency has established a Common Core Curriculum for border guard training academies throughout the EU, ensuring harmonised training and testing standards, and has set up 11 Partnership Academies across the EU providing risk-analysis training to all EU Member States. Frontex is currently formulating a further mid-level curriculum for border guard training with a high-level curriculum also on the drawing board for future implementation.
While research and development (R&D) is an important part of Frontex’s function, the agency does not itself carry out any technical research. Instead, Frontex provides a platform through which Europe’s 400,000 border guard personnel and the world of industry can meet and discuss needs and possible solutions. Although the bulk of R&D activity to date has focussed on technical issues, ranging from biometrics to surveillance to counterfeit detection, Frontex takes a comprehensive view of the R&D field and intends to broaden its scope to less tangible fields in the future including such areas as ethics and other non-technical areas of operational interoperability.
Management of pooled resources a critical part of the EU’s rapid response mechanism for crisis situations at the external borders. With this aim in mind, Frontex was instrumental in establishing Rapid Border Intervention Teams (RABITs), a Europe-wide network of more than 700 personnel and a full range of technical equipment from aircraft to mobile RADAR units and heartbeat detectors. The criteria set down in EU regulations for the deployment of RABITs specify that the circumstances be urgent and exceptional, so rather than being active units, these teams are kept in a constant state of readiness through ongoing training to ensure a common emergency response capability should it ever be needed due to a major humanitarian crisis or natural disaster straining normal border-control mechanisms.
Frontex also assists Member States and Schengen-associated countries in the co-ordination of return flights. In the event that somebody is determined by a Member State government to be staying in that country illegally, they may be asked to leave. Most do so voluntarily, but those who do not may be forcibly returned to their country of origin. In these cases, it is Frontex’s role to co-ordinate repatriation activities between those countries to ensure that humanitarian standards are met and to maximise efficiency and cost-effectiveness in joint return operations. Together with the experts from the Member States and refugee and asylum organisations, Frontex is also involved in identifying best practices in this area.
In addition to the specific activities mentioned above,Frontex liaises closely with other Community and EU partners involved in the development of the security of the external borders, such as EUROPOL, CEPOL, the customs co-operation and the co-operation on phytosanitary and veterinary controls, in order to promote overall coherency. The agency also actively promote co-operation with other border-related law enforcement bodies responsible for internal security at EU level.
In addition to co-ordinating co-operation of EU Member States, Frontex also pays attention to co-operation with external countries’ border security authorities—chiefly those countries identified as a source or transit rout of irregular migration—in line with general EU external policy. Concentrating on third countries that share common goals with the EU in terms of border security, such co-operation is always being targeted at sustainable partnership. In the gradual process in which such partnership is developed, working arrangements concluded between Frontex and its third country partner precede practical measures.
